Discovering the Emotions: Surprise

The man who lives on the third floor is called Mr Miller, and he is quite peculiar.

One day, I was playing at the playground in front of our building with my friends, and suddenly there was an explosion. A cloud of purple smoke came out of the third floor window, and we heard someone screaming. It didn’t sound like frightened screams, though; it was more like the kind of squealing sound people make when they’re really happy.

We all ran into the building and scrambled up the stairs to the third floor, where we found lots of the other neighbours had already gathered. We knocked and called out to him, but it was ages before Mr Miller opened the door. He looked surprised.

“What on earth is the matter? Why are all of you here? Did I miss something?”

“What’s going on in there?!” thundered our perpetually grumpy landlord, Mr Evans. “You missed something, all right! You missed the fact that it’s forbidden to do any hocus-pocus in this apartment building!!” He grumbled so heavily that the blue vein on his forehead bulged.

After that, I was convinced that Mr Miller must be a magician. Surely that was the only explanation for why he had been doing hocus-pocus? But my mum told me that he is actually an inventor.

Our teacher had said something about inventors during one of our art lessons. It was when my classmate John was trying to make a paintbrush using a lolly stick and some thread for the bristles. He had forgotten to bring his paintbrushes to school that day, so he needed something else to paint with. In the lesson before we had been learning how to sew, and John still had some thread left. He tried…